This is a very grave fact. I need not enter into the details of the question. They are well known. There may be some exaggerations, Indian immigrants may not always be drawn from desirable classes, there may be differences of opinion as to the wisdom of the attitude taken up by some of the Indians in South Africa, and Englishmen may sympathize with the desire of British and Dutch colonists to check the growth of another alien population in their midst. But that the Indian has not received there the just treatment to which he is entitled as a subject of the British Crown, and that disabilities and indignities are heaped upon him because he is an Indian, are broad facts that are not and cannot be disputed. The resolution adopted by the Imperial Council, with the sanction of the Government of India, was formally directed against Natal because it is only in regard to Natal that India possesses an effective weapon of retaliation in withholding the supply of indentured labour which is indispensable to the prosperity of that colony. But the Indian grievance is not confined to Natal; it is even greater in the Transvaal. Still less is it confined to the particular class of Indians who emigrate as indentured labourers to South Africa. What Indians feel most bitterly is that however well educated, however respectable and even distinguished may be an Indian who goes to or resides in South Africa, and especially in the Transvaal, he is treated as an outcast and is at the mercy of harsh laws and regulations framed for his oppression, and often interpreted with extra harshness by the officials who are left to apply them. This bitterness is intensified by the recollection that, before the South African War, the wrongs of British Indians in the Transvaal figured prominently in the catalogue of charges brought by the Imperial Government against the Kruger régime and contributed not a little to precipitate its downfall. In prosecuting the South African War Great Britain drew freely upon India for assistance of every kind except actual Indian combatants. Not only was it the loyalty of India that enabled the British troops who saved Natal to be embarked hurriedly at Bombay, but it was the constant supply from India of stores of all kinds, of transport columns, of hospital bearers, &c., which, to a great extent, made up throughout the war for the deficiencies of the British War Office. There are monuments erected in South Africa which testify to the devotion of British Indians who, though non-combatants, laid down their lives in the cause of the Empire. Yet, as far as the British Indians are concerned, the end of it all has been that their lot in the Transvaal since it became a British Colony is harder than it was In the old Kruger days, and the British colonists in the Transvaal, who were ready enough to use Indian grievances as a stick with which to beat Krugerism, have now joined hands with the Dutch in refusing to redress them. The Government of India have repeatedly urged upon the Imperial Government the gravity of this question, and Lord Curzon especially pressed upon his friends, when they were in office, the vital importance of effecting some acceptable settlement whilst the Transvaal was still a Crown Colony, and, therefore, more amenable to the influence of the Mother Country than it would be likely to prove when once endowed with self-government. Yet the Imperial Government after a succession of half-hearted and ineffective protests have now finally acquiesced in the perpetuation and even the aggravation of wrongs which some ten years ago they solemnly declared to be intolerable.
Apart from the sense of justice upon which Englishmen pride themselves, it is impossible to overlook the disastrous consequences of this gran rifiuto for the prestige of British rule in India. One of the Indian Members of Council, Mr. Dadabhoy, indicated them in terms as moderate as they were significant:—
In 1899 Lord Lansdowne feared the moral consequences in India of a conviction of the powerlessness of the British Raj to save the Indian settlers in the Transvaal from oppression and harsh treatment. That was when there was peace all over this country, when sedition, much more anarchism, was an unheard-of evil. If the situation was disquieting then, what is it now when the urgent problem of the moment is how to put down and prevent the growth of unrest In the land? The masses do not understand the niceties of the relations between the Mother Country and the Colonies; they do not comprehend the legal technicalities. The British Raj has so far revealed itself to them as a power whose influence is irresistible, and when they find that, with all its traditional omnipotence, it has not succeeded in securing to their countrymen —admittedly a peaceable and decent body of settlers who rendered valuable services during the war—equal treatment at the hands of a small Dependency, they become disheartened and attribute the failure to the European colonist's influence over the Home Government. That is an impression which is fraught with incalculable potentialities of mischief and which British statesmanship should do everything in its power to dispel. The present political situation in India adds special urgency to the case.
No comments of mine could add to the significance of this warning.
The measure contemplated by Mr. Gokhale's resolution may have some direct effect upon Natal, whose leading statesmen have repeatedly acknowledged the immense value of Indian indentured labour to the Colony, and may indirectly affect public opinion in the Transvaal. But behind the immediate question of the worse or better treatment of Indians in South Africa stand much larger questions, which Mr. Gokhale did not hesitate to state with equal frankness:—
Behind all the grievances of which I have spoken to-day three questions of vital importance emerge to view. First, what is the status of us Indians in this Empire? Secondly, what is the extent of the responsibility which lies on the Imperial Government to ensure to us just and humane and, gradually, even equal treatment in this Empire? And, thirdly, how far are the self-governing members of this Empire bound by its cardinal principles, or are they to share in its privileges only and not to bear their share of the disadvantages?
These issues have been raised in their most acute form in South Africa, but they exist also in Australia, and even in Canada, where many Indians suffered heavily from the outburst of anti-Asiatic feeling which swept along the Pacific Coast a couple of years ago. They involve the position of Asiatic subjects of the Crown in all the self-governing Dominions and indirectly in many of the Crown Colonies, for they affect the relations of the white and coloured races throughout the Empire. Here, however, I must confine myself to the Indian aspects. I have discussed them with a good many Indians, and they are quite alive to the difficulties of the situation. Though they resent the colour bar, they realize the strength of the feeling there is in the Colonies in favour of preserving the white race from intermixture with non-white races. It is, in fact, a feeling they themselves in some ways share, for, in India the unfortunate Eurasian meets with even less sympathy from Indians than from Europeans. Indian susceptibilities may even find some consolation in the fact that Colonial dislike of the Indian immigrant is to a great extent due to his best qualities. "Indians," said Mr. Mudholkar, appealing to Lord Minto, "are hated, as your Lordship's predecessor pointed out, on account of their very virtues. It is because they are sober, thrifty, industrious, more attentive to their business than the white men that their presence in the Colonies is considered intolerable." Educated Indians know how little hold the Mother Country has over her Colonies in these matters. They know that both British and Anglo-Indian statesmen have recognized their grievances without being able to secure their redress, and it is interesting to note how warm were the tributes paid in the Imperial Council to the energy with which Lord Curzon had upheld their cause, by some of those who were most bitterly opposed to him when he was in India. They know, on the other hand, that though the British Labour Party can afford to profess great sympathy for Indian political aspirations in India, it has never tried—or, if it has tried, it has signally failed—to exercise the slightest influence in favour of Indian claims to fair treatment with its allies in the Colonies, where the Labour Party is always the most uncompromising advocate of a policy of exclusion and oppression, and they know the power which the Labour Party wields in all our Colonies.
They are, therefore, I believe, ready, to reckon with the realities of the situation and to agree with Lord Curzon that "the common rights of British citizenship cannot be held to override the rights of self-protection conceded to self-governing Colonies"—rights which, moreover, are often exercised to the detriment of immigrants from the Mother Country itself. They will, on the other hand, urge the withholding of Indian labour if the Colonies are unwilling to treat it with fairness and humanity, and they argue rightly enough, that India, to whom the emigration of tens of thousands of her people is not an unmixed advantage, will lose far less than Colonies whose development will be starved by the loss of labour they cannot themselves supply. An influential Indian Member stated in Council that they have accepted the view that complete freedom of immigration is beyond the pale of practical politics, and is not to be pressed as things stand. All that they ask, he added, in the Transvaal is for the old Indian residents to be allowed to live peaceably, as in Cape Colony for instance, without being treated like habitual criminals, and for men of education and position to be allowed to come in, so that they may have teachers, ministers of religion, and doctors for themselves and their people. In Natal they ask for the maintenance of the rights and privileges they have had for years and years. On such lines a practical working arrangement with the Colonies should not be beyond the bounds of possibility. But what Indians also demand is that laws and regulations of an exceptional character which may be accepted in regard to immigration shall not be applicable to Indians who merely wish to travel in the Colonies. An Indian of very high position whom every one from the King downwards welcomes when he comes to England, wished a few years ago to visit Australia, but before doing so he wrote to a friend there to inquire whether he would be subjected to any unpleasant formalities. The answer he received discouraged him. These are the sort of difficulties which Indians claim should be removed, and one practical suggestion I have heard put forward is that, on certain principles to be laid down by mutual agreement between the Imperial Government, the Governments of the Dominions, and the Government of India, the latter should have power to issue passports to Indian subjects which would be recognized and would exempt them from all vexatious formalities throughout the Empire.
The whole question is one that cannot be allowed to drag on indefinitely without grave danger to the Empire. It evidently cannot be solved without the co-operation of the Colonies. Next year the Imperial Conference meets again in the capital of the Empire. If, in the meantime, the Imperial Government were to enter into communication with the Government of India and with the Crown Colonies, so many of whom are closely interested in Indian labour, they should be in a position to lay before the representatives of the Dominions assembled in London next March considered proposals which would afford a basis for discussion and, one may hope, for a definite agreement. A recognition of the right of Colonial Governments to regulate the conditions on which British Indians may be allowed admission as indentured labourers or for permanent residence ought to secure guarantees for the equitable and humane treatment of those who have been already admitted, or shall hereafter be admitted, and also an undertaking that Indians of good position armed with specified credentials from the Government of India, travelling either for pleasure or for purposes of scientific study or on business or with other legitimate motives, would be allowed to enter and travel about for a reasonable period without let or hindrance of any sort. That is the minimum which would, I believe, satisfy the best Indian opinion, and it is inconceivable that if the situation were freely and frankly explained to our Colonial kinsmen they would reject a settlement so essential to the interests and to the credit of the whole Empire in relation to India.